Microsoft Launching Windows 11 on October 5

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Mark your calendars, Windows fans. Microsoft has announced that its next and heavily anticipated installment of Windows, Windows 11, will be available on October 5, 2021.



On that date, Microsoft will begin rolling out Windows 11 as a free upgrade to “eligible Windows 10 PCs.” The first PCs that come pre-loaded with the operating system should also be available to purchase that month.



Microsoft has noted that the free upgrade to Windows 11 will be rolled out in a phased and measured approach. New eligible devices will get the upgrade first. It will then roll out over time to other devices based on “intelligence models that consider hardware eligibility, reliability metrics, age of device, and other factors that impact the upgrade experience.”



That said, Microsoft expects that all eligible devices will have received the Windows 11 upgrade by...
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Continue reading...


 
I feel like unless a compelling reason to "upgrade" somehow arises after the fact, I won't be upgrading until 2025 when Win 10 goes EOL.

In general when it comes to software, which includes operating systems, unless you absolutely need a new feature present only in a newer version, older is better, as long as it is still supported and patched.
 
Let's go down the new features shall we?

  • The new design and sounds are modern, fresh, clean and beautiful, bringing you a sense of calm and ease.
Whenever software companies start talking about fresh reworked UI or aesthetic designs it just makes me want to roll my eyes. I'd prefer it if UI and design just stayed fixed and never changed. By all means, if something winds up improving usability, improve it, but just quit changing the Aesthetics all the time. Just choose one and stick with it. It literally adds no benefit what so ever.

  • With Start, we’ve put you and your content at the center. Start utilizes the power of the cloud and Microsoft 365 to show you your recent files no matter what device you were viewing them on.
Do not want. I don't want "cloud" in anything I do or touch.

  • Snap Layouts, Snap Groups and Desktops provide an even more powerful way to multitask and optimize your screen real estate.
This might be useful, but we already have snap options in Windows 10, and had them in Windows 7 as well.


  • Chat from Microsoft Teams integrated into the taskbar provides a faster way to connect to the people you care about.
Absolutely DO NOT WANT. Teams is a bloated piece of crapware. I do not want it on my machine in any way shape or form. I don't usually use my computer to connect to people, other than by email, and I'd prefer it to stay that way.

  • Widgets, a new personalized feed powered by AI, provides a faster way to access the information you care about, and with Microsoft Edge’s world class performance, speed and productivity features you can get more done on the web.
DO NOT WANT. I want absolutely zero AI in any product I use. Any automation needs to be set up manually and statically by me. I want no algorithms trying to guess things about me and getting them wrong, and I don't want my data used for this purpose in any way.

  • Windows 11 delivers the best Windows ever for gaming and unlocks the full potential of your system’s hardware with technology like DirectX12 Ultimate, DirectStorage and Auto HDR. With Xbox Game Pass for PC or Ultimate you get access to over 100 high-quality PC games to play on Windows 11 for one low monthly price. (Xbox Game Pass sold separately.)
I do not want anything named "XBOX" on my computer. My machine is a professional workstation, not some childs toy. I will also NEVER sign up for any kind of game pass. I have specific games I like, and I buy only those. I don't want to pay a monthly fee to have access to just a random bunch of games, most of which I'll probably hate.

I do still enjoy the occasional game though, so it remains to be seen if this DX12 Ultimate makes any real difference, or if it is just marketing speak.


  • Windows 11 comes with a new Microsoft Store rebuilt with an all-new design making it easier to search and discover your favorite apps, games, shows, and movies in one trusted location. We look forward to continuing our journey to bring Android apps to Windows 11 and the Microsoft Store through our collaboration with Amazon and Intel; this will start with a preview for Windows Insiders over the coming months.
I don't want a Microsoft store. I haven't used the Microsoft store to date, and I don't [picture myself starting now. I also don't understand why anyone would want to run an Android app in windows, unless they are an app developer running some sort of testing.

  • Windows 11 is the most inclusively designed version of Windows with new accessibility improvements that were built for and by people with disabilities.
If this helps people who need it, that is great, and I hope it works for them. I've been lucky to not need these features, and I sincerely hope it stays that way.

  • Windows 11 unlocks new opportunities for developers and creators. We are opening the Store to allow more developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to bring their apps to the Store, improving native and web app development with new developer tools, and making it easier for you to refresh the look and feel across all our app designs and experiences.
Pass. What little content creation I do, I can do just fine now (And I do it in Linux, not in Windows, unless you count working in spreadsheets and Word for work and that works just fine as is.)

  • Windows 11 is optimized for speed, efficiency and improved experiences with touch, digital pen and voice input.
I like the first half of that sentence. I absolutely HATE the second.

While touch works well on a phone, I don't use touch on a computer, and I never will. It's a dumb idea, and whenever you "optimize for touch" you wind up with god awful UI's with big fat finger buttons and tons of wasted dead space ruining everything. Kindly go **** yourselves with this touch nonsense.

  • Windows 11 is the operating system for hybrid work, delivering new experiences that work how you work, are secure by design, and easy and familiar for IT to deploy and manage. Businesses can also test Windows 11 in preview today in Azure Virtual Desktop, or at general availability by experiencing Windows 11 in the new Windows 365.

I've been "hybrid" working just fine to date. All I need is a VPN so I can access the shared drives at work. I don't need nor want any of your bullshit cloud garbage.

I have spoken.
 
I use these features of windows 11 today. Just about every one of them. I am an personal office 365 subscriber, and my work uses teams so it's easy for me to launch teams during the work day so that way I have multiple screens/sessions going showing that I am available even if I am 'working' on my personal computer. (mostly researching and testing external access security.)
 
Grimlakin said:
I use these features of windows 11 today. Just about every one of them. I am an personal office 365 subscriber, and my work uses teams so it's easy for me to launch teams during the work day so that way I have multiple screens/sessions going showing that I am available even if I am 'working' on my personal computer. (mostly researching and testing external access security.)
Click to expand...

My workplace also uses teams.

They issued me a crappy laptop, but as luck would have it they allow me to use my personal machine to access the VPN, and install Office365 applications, as long as I have competent antivirus (I wound up with Trend Micro)

So, I have a Virtualbox VM on my Linux desktop with a dedicated Windows 10 install that I use exclusively for work. In that VM I have Teams installed, and use it for various work meetings. I don't ever use the video chat feature in teams. ( don't feel the need to see my colleagues or for them to see me) I find the collaboration spaces and file repositories in it cumbersome to use, and the instant messaging a serious downgrade from Skype for Business before it. I often completely miss messages sent to me in Teams because they just don't attract my attention when they are hidden somewhere inside the monster that is Teams.

Teams to me is bloated, difficult and cumbersome to navigate and find what you are looking for inside of it and just overall annoying.

I liked the old Microsoft Lync the best. It went downhill a little when it became Skype for Business, and now Teams, IMHO is a mostly unusable pile of doggy doo.

I would be interested in figuring out how you have multiple Teams windows open at once though, as I have tried that in the past and never quite succeeded. I feel it would be easier to use if I could have two Teams windows open side by side with different content in each. The constant switching back and forth through cumbersome hierarchies is what I really hate the most about Teams.


So, all of that was just to state that I do use Teams (on my dedicated work VM on my Linux desktop), but I do so reluctantly because I don't think it is a very good tool.

Then there is my bare metal Windows 10 install. This install gets used for one thing and one thing only. Games. It is a pared down minimalistic install (as much as possible, as Microsoft doesn't let you remove most things) focused entirely on games. I don't even browse the web from this install, unless it is on the rare occurrence I need to manually download a patch, or a driver or a game mod.

On this machine I DO NOT WANT teams. I don't want Cortana here either. Or "Calculator", "Contacts", "Calendar", "Camera", "Clock" or any of these other built in apps of which a surprising number seem to start with the letter C.

I want absolutely nothing installed other than drivers, Steam, a few games, and the various tools and apps I use for tweaking and overclocking (Like MSI Afterburner). I absolutely hate that I have Microsoft's entire ecosystem of the type of apps you'd expect to find on a tablet or a phone forced on me for what I intend to be a single purpose ultra streamlined dedicated operating system install.

I also really disdain the **** XBOX Apps. This is a PC, not a ****ty console. the fact that they rebranded everything that has to do with games to be called "XBOX" really pisses me off.
 
Zarathustra said:
So, I have a Virtualbox VM on my Linux desktop with a dedicated Windows 10 install that I use exclusively for work. In that VM I have Teams installed, and use it for various work meetings. I don't ever use the video chat feature in teams. ( don't feel the need to see my colleagues or for them to see me) I find the collaboration spaces and file repositories in it cumbersome to use, and the instant messaging a serious downgrade from Skype for Business before it. I often completely miss messages sent to me in Teams because they just don't attract my attention when they are hidden somewhere inside the monster that is Teams.

Teams to me is bloated, difficult and cumbersome to navigate and find what you are looking for inside of it and just overall annoying.
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This is exactly what I do, except I use a Macbook instead of a Linux Laptop. Dedicated Windows VM with VPN that I use when I have to use it. When I can get away with it I just dial into Teams on my phone and leave the video off, then it's not that much different than a regular conference call - but occasionally you need to watch the screen or interact.

I feel the exact same way about the shared files and everything that my company uses as well. Cumbersome, slow, requires a good deal of training before it's useful. O365 is the easiest thing we have to use, and it's corporate-implemented and often has configuration issues (probably our IT guys moreso than anything on Microsoft, but I couldn't say).
 
Zarathustra said:
Teams to me is bloated, difficult and cumbersome to navigate and find what you are looking for inside of it and just overall annoying.

I liked the old Microsoft Lync the best. It went downhill a little when it became Skype for Business, and now Teams, IMHO is a mostly unusable pile of doggy doo.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Lync, Skype, MS Office Communicator (MOC), some other names for the same product etc. ALL were better than Teams. I hate Teams SO MUCH but we are forced to use it for work.
 
It was years before I considered Win10 decent enough to be used, and I'm gonna go ahead and assume the same for Win11. I sure as f*ck won't be touching it until a few years from now (aside from testing in a VM or another PC). Meanwhile I hope Steam Deck gets so popular that it helps fuel major advancements for gaming in Linux. I was also hoping most devs would stick with Vulkan instead of D3D12 (just as I had hoped devs would use OpenAL over XAudio2), but of course that didn't happen. Well, at least id Software rolls proper.

Zarathustra said:
I do still enjoy the occasional game though, so it remains to be seen if this DX12 Ultimate makes any real difference, or if it is just marketing speak.
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DX12 Ultimate (DX12.2) has already been around, with stuff like DXR 1.1, Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shaders, etc. It's not new for Win11. Win10 is even getting DirectStorage, although I heard that refinements to the file system in Win11 make DirectStorage more effective. But yeah, DX12 Ultimate has already been out. There aren't yet any games truly built around it though, too early for that I guess. Some games make use of VRS and DXR 1.1, but I think stuff like the Mesh Shaders haven't been fully utilized yet. I think upcoming engines like Unreal Engine 5 will make heavier use of things like Mesh Shaders.

Unfortunately, as is often the case, it's not until consoles start heavily using these features that we also get to see them used in games on PC. AMD64/x86-64 came out in 2003, and we had a few 64-bit games back then like Far Cry 1, Riddick: EFBB, and 64-bit exes for games like UT2K4 and HL2, but it wasn't until 2013 that 64-bit games became the standard, thanks to the 8th-gen consoles. Same thing with DirectX 11, the only reason it started getting heavily used was cuz of the consoles.

It takes a few years for games truly built around the tech in new consoles to show up (for example, real 8th-gen games didn't really start showing up until 2016, which is 3 years after PS4 and XB1 launched), so I'm thinking by 2023 we'll start seeing games truly built for the 9th-gen consoles. When that happens, we'll start seeing that sh1t on PC too. No, long gone are the days when a developer develops their game for PC first, then ports down to consoles. It's the right way to do things, the proper way, but sadly not the way things are done anymore.
 
DrezKill said:
No, long gone are the days when a developer develops their game for PC first, then ports down to consoles. It's the right way to do things, the proper way, but sadly not the way things are done anymore.
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I mean CDPR tried and see how that worked out for them?
 
Grimlakin said:
I mean CDPR tried and see how that worked out for them?
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CDPR did a simultaneous PC+console launch for CP2077, and on top of that, they targeted the previous-gen consoles which they really should not have done. What they should have done is release the game on PC only, then come back later with the console versions. Witcher 2 was a better example, since that game was done for PC before they even thought about console. Actually Witcher 3 turned out pretty well too, even though it also had a simultaneous launch with PC and 8th-gen consoles. So far though the only real examples I know of where a game was truly made for PC while still having a console release at the same time are Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. But if you go back farther, look at games like Half-Life 2 or F.E.A.R., which came out on PC well before the inferior console versions. When you develop a game with consoles in mind, it holds back the PC version. PC should be the main version. When you port a PC game down to consoles, it doesn't hurt the console versions, but designing the game around the lowest common denominator (the consoles) usually just results in a game that does not properly utilize PC hardware or just plain isn't properly designed for PC.

Things might be a bit different for 9th-gen consoles, cuz with Zen 2 and RDNA2, consoles for once finally have some decent hardware in them. So designing around the 9th-gen consoles will hurt games a lot less. I mean shiat, XBSX and PS5 are certainly more powerful than my Haswell-E+Pascal PC. Still, there are already PCs that are way more powerful than these consoles, and in a few years when truly native 9th-gen games start showing up, the gap between 9th-gen consoles and PCs will be even larger. Of course we do have the console mid-generation refreshes to look forward to, since they do that kind of sh1t now. Helps bump up the baseline. I wish PC was the baseline though. Consoles used to sit under the baseline, not be the baseline. Remember when Doom 3 and HL2 on original Xbox looked and ran like @ss? You ever play Unreal Tournament on PS2? There was a time when consoles couldn't even really hope to run PC games. Things started to change during 7th-gen.
 
Ah cant wait until teams engagement statistics are used in lieu of employee's review!! It will be AWESOME! MS knows better, AND they know everything! And with AI there is zero room for error in these things... I mean statistics say xyz, no way its wrong, look its like a number and everything!
 
If I was a big company, I would be looking for a way out of MS.. you are basically paying big brother to be big brother all over your stuff... But everyone is looking for a way in even more.. funny.
 
DrezKill said:
It was years before I considered Win10 decent enough to be used, and I'm gonna go ahead and assume the same for Win11. I sure as f*ck won't be touching it until a few years from now (aside from testing in a VM or another PC). Meanwhile I hope Steam Deck gets so popular that it helps fuel major advancements for gaming in Linux. I was also hoping most devs would stick with Vulkan instead of D3D12 (just as I had hoped devs would use OpenAL over XAudio2), but of course that didn't happen. Well, at least id Software rolls proper.


DX12 Ultimate (DX12.2) has already been around, with stuff like DXR 1.1, Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shaders, etc. It's not new for Win11. Win10 is even getting DirectStorage, although I heard that refinements to the file system in Win11 make DirectStorage more effective. But yeah, DX12 Ultimate has already been out. There aren't yet any games truly built around it though, too early for that I guess. Some games make use of VRS and DXR 1.1, but I think stuff like the Mesh Shaders haven't been fully utilized yet. I think upcoming engines like Unreal Engine 5 will make heavier use of things like Mesh Shaders.

Unfortunately, as is often the case, it's not until consoles start heavily using these features that we also get to see them used in games on PC. AMD64/x86-64 came out in 2003, and we had a few 64-bit games back then like Far Cry 1, Riddick: EFBB, and 64-bit exes for games like UT2K4 and HL2, but it wasn't until 2013 that 64-bit games became the standard, thanks to the 8th-gen consoles. Same thing with DirectX 11, the only reason it started getting heavily used was cuz of the consoles.

It takes a few years for games truly built around the tech in new consoles to show up (for example, real 8th-gen games didn't really start showing up until 2016, which is 3 years after PS4 and XB1 launched), so I'm thinking by 2023 we'll start seeing games truly built for the 9th-gen consoles. When that happens, we'll start seeing that sh1t on PC too. No, long gone are the days when a developer develops their game for PC first, then ports down to consoles. It's the right way to do things, the proper way, but sadly not the way things are done anymore.
Click to expand...
The Chinese MMO Justice uses mesh shaders on PC. It received the update earlier this year. Supposedly it saw a massive jump in performance with ray tracing enabled on machines that support mesh shaders.
 
Uvilla said:
Ah cant wait until teams engagement statistics are used in lieu of employee's review!! It will be AWESOME! MS knows better, AND they know everything! And with AI there is zero room for error in these things... I mean statistics say xyz, no way its wrong, look its like a number and everything!
Click to expand...

There is this misconception among decision makers that if you go to the cloud you can get rid of all of your other IT expenses, not realizing that you still need desktop support, and security is still on you in just about every cloud services contract out there, so the savings are much much smaller than they seem, and in many cases may even cost more.

But because of this, there is a mad rush for "the cloud" for the "savings".

In business there is definitely something to be said for focusing on your core competencies, and allowing others to do what they do best, and if IT is not your core competency, thus outsourcing it, but the whole cloud services thing is a mixed bag. Atr some point I expect the pendulum to swing back the other way. No idea how soon that will happen though.
 
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Zarathustra said:
Tehre is this misconception among decision makers that if you go to the cloud you can get rid of all of your other IT expenses, not realizing that you still need desktop support, and security is still on you in just about every cloud services contract out there, so the savings are much much smaller than they seem, and in many cases may even cost more.

But because of this, there is a mad rush for "the cloud" for the "savings".

In business there is definitely something to be said for focusing on your core competencies, and allowing others to do what they do best, and if IT is not your core competency, thus outsourcing it, but the whole cloud services thing is a mixed bag. Atr some point I expect the pendulum to swing back the other way. No idea how soon that will happen though.
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The worst part is you're centralizing all your resources in a single failure point that you have no control over. We've seen how that affects the internet as a whole when content delivery networks go down. You seriously want that possibility for your business? If I recall correctly there was an outage of Microsoft's cloud services around Christmas time a few years ago that lasted a few hours.
 
Armenius said:
The worst part is you're centralizing all your resources in a single failure point that you have no control over. We've seen how that affects the internet as a whole when content delivery networks go down. You seriously want that possibility for your business?
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Well, the flip side of that is, you pay a cloud service a small amount, as part of a much larger overall client base, for several 9's in reliability and uptime.

If you wanted to achieve the same reliability/uptime on your own, it would likely cost you, unless you are a very large buisness as well, a significant amount more than it does to throw in with a cloud service. Data center grade isn't cheap or easy to maintain.

So if you are anything less than a Fortune 500 sized company, coming off the cloud would likely result in either higher expenses and/or less reliability overall.

You do, however, have the convenience of full transparency when you keep everything in house. It can lead to feeling more in control when problems crop up. You aren't just told "It's down, we expect it to be back in XXX hours" twiddling your thumbs while your company sits around idling a lot of man power and production based on lack of IT.
 
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